Adolf Hitler (born April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, and died on April 30, 1945, in Berlin) was a Nazi German politician of Austrian origin who was the dictator of the German Empire from 1933 to 1945. He was a German military and politician of Austrian origin, leader, geologist, and original member of the German National Socialist Workers Party.
He established a National Socialist regime in Germany between 1933 and 1945 known as the Third Reich. He elevated Nazism, Fascism, and Racism that Benito Mussolini preached to global levels and established them as the ideological basis of his politics.
When Hitler and Nazi fascism came to power, they took advantage of the differences between the capitalist powers to rearm themselves and, when the time came, threaten the world with their military might in alliance with Italy and Japan.
The United States, Great Britain, and France encouraged the German fascist government, thinking that it would launch itself against the Soviet Union without seeing the danger that hung over the planet in its anti-communist political blindness. This gave way to the largest and bloodiest armed conflict in history: World War II.
The Early Life of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, a small village near Linz in the Upper Austria province, not far from the German border, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Born to a middle-class family, his father, Alois Hitler (1837-1903), was a customs agent. His mother, Klara Hitler (1860-1907), was Alois’s third wife.
Adolf Hitler was the couple’s third child. Since Hitler’s parents were cousins, a papal dispensation had to be obtained for the marriage. Of the five children of Alois and Klara, only Adolf and his sister Paula reached adulthood. Hitler’s father also had a son, Alois Jr., and a daughter, Angela, with his second wife.
Hitler said that as a child he was often flogged by his father. Years later he said to his secretary: “So I made the decision to never cry again when my father spanked me. A few days later I had the opportunity to test my will. My mother, scared, hid in front of the door. As for me, I silently counted the blows from the stick that hit my butt”.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler concluded that his poor performance in education was a rebellion against his father, who wanted his son to pursue a career as a customs agent; Instead, Hitler wanted to become a painter. However, Alois Hitler wanted his son to become a civil servant like him, a job of which he was very proud and to which he had arrived with virtually no academic basis.
But the young Hitler was not at all seduced by that future since he was too far from his goal, the arts. However, after Alois’s death on January 3, 1903, Hitler’s schoolwork did not improve. At the age of 16, Hitler dropped out of high school without a degree.
Beginnings in Nazism
With the defeat of Germany in the First World War, with the end of the monarchical regime and the establishment of a Republic in 1918, and with the growing wave of social dissatisfaction caused by the serious economic crisis, the various parties opposed to the government arose in the country.
In Milan, Italy, in March 1919, Mussolini founded the first group of the future Italian Fascist Party. In the same year, in Munich, Adolf Hitler joined a small group called the “German Labor Party”.
With great oratory skills, Hitler changed the name to “National Socialist Party of German Workers” (Nazi Party) and incorporated into the party, a paramilitary organization of the “SA” (Assault Section), in charge of summoning opponents.
The party’s confused program denounced Jews, Marxists, and foreigners, promised work, and an end to war reparations.
In 1921, at the age of 33, Adolf Hitler became head of the party. He created the “SS” (Security Brigades), an elite force. After failing to attempt a coup in Munich (1923), Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison. He completed only eight months, which he used to write the first part of the book “Minha Luta”, a work in which he developed the foundations of Nazism.
Ideology of Nazism
The Nazi Party program, inspired by fascism, summarized its ideological proposal:
- Racism: according to their ideology, the Germans belonged to a superior race, the “Aryan”, who was supposed to rule the world. Jews were considered the main enemies.
- Totalitarianism: the individual belonged to the State. Like fascism, Nazism was anti-parliamentary, anti-liberal and anti-democratic. Totalitarianism was summed up in a people (Volk), an empire (Reich), and a leader (Führer).
- Anti-Marxism and Anti-Capitalism: For Hitler, Marxism was a product of Jewish thought (since Marx was a Jew), and capitalism would exacerbate inequalities.
- Uni-partisanship: Hitler preached that the new order would be achieved with a totalitarian state. The vanguard of this “revolution” should be a single party, hierarchized and directed according to the principle of absolute leadership, the “National Socialist Party”.
- Nationalism: for Nazism, it was necessary to destroy the “humiliations” of the Versailles Treaty and build Greater Germany.
The Taking of Power
With the 1929 crisis, political extremism took over Germany. In 1930 Hitler became a German citizen. In 1931, six million unemployed joined the ranks of the Nazi Party.
In the 1932 legislative elections, the Nazis elected 230 deputies. In the presidential election, Marshal Hindenburg was re-elected with 19 million votes, but Hitler won 13 million. In 1933, during a serious political crisis, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor.
Terror and Dictatorship of Adolf Hitler
In just 23 months, in a succession of coups de force, illegal acts, and murders, Adolf Hitler installed his personal dictatorship. With the authorization of the President, he dissolved Parliament. He summoned SA and SS. In the campaign for new elections, several opposition leaders were murdered. The Nazis set fire to Parliament and blamed the Communists. The death penalty has been reinstated.
The alleged communist conspiracy gave the Nazis 44% of the vote. The 81 elected communists were excluded and on March 23 Hitler obtained the vote of full powers.
The Fuehrer began to apply for the Nazi program. Across Germany, there were 3,000 murders. Other opponents joined communists and Jews in the newly opened concentration camps, such as Dachau and Buchenwald.
Hindenburg died at the end of 1934, Adolf Hitler accumulated the functions of chancellor and president. All officials and officers of the armed forces should take a personal oath of allegiance. It was the beginning of the “Third Reich” (3rd German Empire).
The party’s flag, with the swastika, became that of Germany. In 1935, Germany restarted its arms production and re-established mandatory military service.
Adolf Hitler started his expansionist goals. He approached Mussolini’s Italy, offering economic aid. In May 1938, the German army invaded Austria. In 1939, disrespecting the Munich agreement, they occupied Czechoslovakia. On September 1, he invaded Poland, where he installed a general government and began the persecution of Jews.
Adolf Hitler and World War II
After the invasion of Poland by the German army, England allied with Poland declared war on Germany, France, allied with England did the same, triggering World War II (1939-1942).
Beginning in April 1940, Germany, under Hitler’s command, advanced towards Western Europe, conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. England was facing violent German aviation attacks, even with the help of the United States.
In several conquered countries, the Nazi regime built dozens of concentration camps, and in many of them, the holocaust was practiced – the mass extermination of millions of Jews, who after being killed in gas chambers, were incinerated in ovens built for this purpose. The biggest one was at Auschwitz, Poland.
In 1941, breaking the pact he signed with Joseph Stalin, Hitler’s army invaded the Soviet Union. And the Japanese attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor in the Pacific.
In all the countries occupied by the Nazi fascists, the “Resistance” was organized, a clandestine association that sought to paralyze the enemy through sabotage and surprise attacks.
In 1943, the battle of Stalingrad in the Soviet Union was the first major defeat for German troops. On June 6, 1944, D-day, the Allied front landed in Normandy, Northern France, nullifying Hitler’s forces, it was another step towards German defeat.
The eastern front, made up of the Soviet Red Army, was the first to reach Berlin, giving the final blow to the Third Reich.
Death
As a result of the war ‘s finalization of Germany ‘s defeat and hopelessness increased, they decided to commit suicide with his wife Eva Braun in Berlin on April 30, 1945. They grab themselves in a room and first bite a capsule containing cyanide in Eva Braun, and the poison takes effect within seconds, immediately after Hitler bites a cyanide capsule and simultaneously shoots into the right temple with a gun.
Voluntarily Führerbunkern In his garden, the bodies of gasoline were placed in a pit caused by bombs and burned. It is claimed that the reason for Hitler’s request was that he did not want to be captured and exposed by the Soviet army. Before you commit suicide, he told the generals next to him, “You should never give my body to the Russians, they sculpt me in Moscow.” He said.
When the Russian forces entered and found the corpses, the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun, who were diagnosed at the autopsy performed with dental records, were buried in the new head offices in Magdeburg by the secret Soviet department SMERSH after a period of time to prevent them from becoming a kind of shrine.
On April 4, 1970, a Soviet KGB team was completely burned by removing the remains of Hitler and Braun from the grave at the facility of SMERSH in Magdeburg, and its ashes were poured into the river Biederitz, a tributary of the River Elbe.
Adolf Hitler left orders to continue destruction after his death, ignoring other NSDAP leaders in his will, making Karl Dönitz the German president and Joseph Goebbels as the German chancellor. However, Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda Goebbels committed suicide on May 1, 1945.